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Rage Against the Machine
Band/Group

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	Evil Empire Album Rage Against the Machine Album Renegades Album The Battle of Los Angeles Album

Personnel
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	Brad Wilk ex-drummer Tim Commerford ex-bassist Tom Morello ex-guitarist Zack de la Rocha ex-singer

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Origin
Website	www.ratm.com/
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Date Formed
Date disbanded

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Contents
Overview
Early years (1991-1992)
Break-up and subsequnet releases (2000-2003)
Post-breakup careers: Audioslave, de la Rocha's so
Reunion (2007)
EZLN

Overview Edit
Submitted from IP 213.78.35.163 on 03/06/2007 16:57:07

Rage Against the Machine is a Grammy Award-winning American rock band noted for their blend of hip hop, hard rock and funk, as well as their vocal revolutionary socialist beliefs.

The band split up in 2000, with guitarist Tom Morello, bassist Tim Commerford and drummer Brad Wilk forming part of the supergroup Audioslave, and vocalist Zack de la Rocha starting a low-key career as a solo artist. In January 2007, a reunion performance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival was announced.

Rage drew inspiration from early metallic instrumentation, as well as rap acts such as Public Enemy and Afrika Bambaataa. Their music was based primarily on de la Rocha's rhyming styles and vocals along with their sound, especially Morello's unusual extended guitar techniques.

Early years (1991-1992) Edit
Submitted from IP 213.78.35.163 on 03/06/2007 16:59:08

In 1991, guitarist Tom Morello left his old band, Lock Up, looking to start another band. Morello was in a club in L.A where Zack de la Rocha was rapping. Morello was impressed by de la Rocha's lyric books, and asked him to be vocalist in a band. Morello called and drafted a drummer named Brad Wilk, who had previously auditioned for Lock Up, while de la Rocha convinced his childhood friend Tim Commerford to join as bassist.

The new band named themselves after a song de la Rocha had written for his former band, Inside Out. Kent McClard, with whom Inside Out were associated, claims to have coined the phrase in his zine No Answers.

Shortly after forming, they gave their first public performance in a living room in Orange County, California, where a friend of Tim's was holding a house party. The blueprint for the group's major-label debut album was laid on a twelve-song self-released cassette, the cover image of which was the stock-market with a single match taped to the inlay card. Not all 12 songs made it onto the final album—two were eventually included as B-sides, with the remaining three songs never seeing an official release.

Several record labels expressed interest, and the band eventually signed with Epic Records. Morello said, "Epic agreed to everything we asked—and they've followed through.... We never saw an ideological conflict as long as we maintained creative control."

Break-up and subsequnet releases (2000-2003) Edit
Submitted from IP on 03/06/2007 17:32:17

Renegades, RATM's last studio albumOn October 18, 2000, de la Rocha released the following statement:

"I feel that it is now necessary to leave Rage because our decision-making process has completely failed. It is no longer meeting the aspirations of all four of us collectively as a band, and from my perspective, has undermined our artistic and political ideal. I am extremely proud of our work, both as activists and musicians, as well as indebted and grateful to every person who has expressed solidarity and shared this incredible experience with us."

Renegades, released shortly after the band's dissolution, was a collection of covers of bands as diverse as Devo, Cypress Hill, Minor Threat, MC5 and Bob Dylan. The following year saw the release of another live video, The Battle of Mexico City.

Following the September 11th attacks, Clear Channel created a list of "songs with questionable lyrics" that included all RATM songs.

A live album titled Live at the Grand Olympic Auditorium, an edited recording of their last concerts on September 12 and 13, 2000 at the Grand Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, was released in 2003. It was accompanied by an expanded DVD release of the September 13 show, and also included the previously unreleased music video for "Bombtrack".

Post-breakup careers: Audioslave, de la Rocha's so Edit
Submitted from IP on 03/06/2007 17:34:12

After the group's breakup, Morello, Wilk, and Commerford briefly tried to replace de la Rocha in RATM. Rumoured vocalists at the time included Rey Oropeza of downset., Chuck D of Public Enemy, and B-Real of Cypress Hill. However, the band teamed up with former Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell to form a new band, Audioslave. The first Audioslave single, "Cochise", was released in early November 2002, and the debut album, Audioslave, followed to mainly positive reviews. Their second album Out of Exile debuted at the number one position on the Billboard charts in 2005. The band released a third album named Revelations on September 5th 2006. The band vowed to have a "one-album-per-year" schedule, but Audioslave's future has been cast into doubt following Cornell's leaving on February 15, 2007.

Meanwhile, de la Rocha had been working on a solo album collaboration with DJ Shadow, Company Flow, and The Roots' ?uestlove, but dropped the project in favour of working with Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor. Recording was completed, but the album will probably never be released. A collaboration between de la Rocha and DJ Shadow, the song "March of Death" was released for free over the World Wide Web in 2003 in protest against the imminent invasion of Iraq, and the 2004 soundtrack Songs and Artists that Inspired Fahrenheit 9/11 included one of the collaborations with Reznor, "We Want It All". In late 2005, de la Rocha was seen singing and playing the jarana with Son Jarocho band Son de Madera on multiple occasions.

Morello began his own solo career in 2003, playing political acoustic folk music as The Nightwatchman. He first participated in Billy Bragg's Tell Us the Truth tour with no plans to record, but later recorded a song for Songs and Artists that Inspired Fahrenheit 9/11, "No One Left". In February 2007, he announced a solo album, One Man Revolution, expected in April 2007. The Nightwatchman's first single "Until the End" can be heard on his MySpace page.

Reunion (2007) Edit
Submitted from IP on 03/06/2007 17:39:06

Members of the band had been offered large sums of money to reunite for concerts and tours, and had turned the offers down. Rumors of bad blood between de la Rocha and the other former band members subsequently circulated, but Commerford said that he and de la Rocha see each other often and go surfing together, while Morello said he and de la Rocha communicate by phone, and had met up at a September 15, 2005 protest in support of the South Central Farm. Morello and de la Rocha were photographed together at the protest, the first photograph of the two since the band's breakup.

Rumors that Rage Against the Machine could reunite at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival were cirulating in mid-January, and were confirmed on January 22. The band is billed to headline the final day of Coachella 2007 on Sunday, April 29. The performance was initially thought to be a one-off, but that was cast into doubt following Chris Cornell's exit from Audioslave. Three more performances are planned as part of Rock the Bells with the Wu-Tang Clan and will be played in New York as well as northern and southern California.

The reunion will primarily be a vehicle to voice the band's opposition to the "right-wing purgatory" the United States has "slid into" under the George W. Bush administration since RATM's dissolution.

EZLN Edit
Submitted from IP 213.78.35.163 on 07/03/2007 13:59:51

The band were vocal supporters of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), especially de la Rocha, who has taken trips to the Mexican state of Chiapas to aid their efforts. The flag of the EZLN was also the primary recurring theme in the band's visual art.

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News blog entries

28/04/2007 17:34:25
RAGE ROCKERS TO BE TREATED TO TRAILER ART SHOW

16/04/2007 03:32:17
MORELLO LOVES TO SURPRISE WITH OPEN-MIC SHOWS

17/02/2007 11:45:03
Audioslave singer Cornell quits

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